In everyday life we can perceive and state who surpasses in playing sports and who does not. Are people not exceeding because they were not born with the genetic factor to naturally play the sport or is it because they were never nurtured to play? It is such a complex subject to define because anyone can play a sport if they tried, but not everyone can be an elite athlete. This is because nature prevails over nurture (Davids & Baker, 2007). Nature allows you to be able to play a sport, but in order to be good at a sport it takes encouragement and guidance. However even without having a natural talent in sports you can still be nurtured to play (Davids & Baker, 2007). Watson’s (1924) famous saying goes:
“Give me a dozen healthy infants and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I’ll guarantee to take anyone at random and train him to become any kind of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist … regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors.”
Watson clearly states that even though you may not have the inheritable factor to do something, you will still be capable to do it through nurturing. Therefore in order to be elite, nature and nurture will coincide, developing a great athlete.
‘Single-gene-as-magic-bullet’ is a theory that was used in hope to identify a single gene variant with the potential to intensely impact an individual’s performance (Davids & Baker, 2007). This philosophy of a ‘single-gene-as-magic-bullet’ claims that elite performers are born to flourish (Davids & Baker, 2007), but this is misleading and inconclusive (Lippi et al., 2009). Not just one gene affects performance but rather a whole ray of them (Davids & Baker, 2007). Therefore it is impossible to find the ‘single-gene-as-magic-bullet’ (Lippi et al., 2009). People are now trying to conduct studies on children to see whether or not he or she has this ‘single-gene-as-magic-bullet’ to foresee who will be an elite athlete. The danger in doing this is that you really do not know if it is the genes or the environment has more influence (Davids & Baker, 2007). If you examine a child’s genes and decide for the child what it should and should not do, the child may not be as great as a person as they possibly will be. Qualities in children are nurtured; they are improved and strengthened with time and practice. No person should be allowed to tell a child what he or she can or cannot do! That is up to no one but the child’s. This is an immense weakness in the nature-nurture debate. Many people want to predict something, but in this case you cannot predict a child’s future.
The main reason that this debate will never be solved is because no one can predict in advance whether or not someone will be an elite athlete (Davids & Baker, 2007). Therefore we will never be able to tell if a child will be good at one sport or the other. Instead we have to nurture and guide the child, and from doing so we can then depict were the child lies in his or her sport performance. Many scientists do not like that they cannot come up with an indefinite answer and that is why it is still an on-going debate (Davids & Baker, 2007). Those who are both nurtured and have the genes to perform will more likely be the ones to become the elite athletes.
References
Davids, K., & Baker, J. (2007). Genes, Environment and Sport Performance. Sports Medicine, 37(11), 961-980
Lippi, G., Longo, U. G., & Maffulli, N. (2010). Genetics and sports. British medical bulletin, 93(1), 27-47.
Watson JB. Behaviorism. New York: Norton, 1924
